


Cold Blood

by adastra615



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 19th Century, Banter, Blood, Broken Bones, Crowley pining for better times, Drug Use, Existential Angst, Gen, Injury, M/M, Near Drowning, Self-Harm, Stabbing, TOO MUCH, Torture, Wing Injury, a lot of indulgent hurt/comfort, flash backs, frost fairs, holy shit these tags are intense, maybe more hurt than comfort, not so much frost fairs - look them up they're soooo cool
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-08-13 12:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20174218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adastra615/pseuds/adastra615
Summary: Crowley loses a wing and with it memories surface, of Aziraphale, of ice, of times that are parallel, of things that are missing.





	1. Chapter 1

"Okay. Okay." Aziraphale flits about the room, his eyes wide before he crouches down next to Crowley. His hands are coated in blood.

Crowley detects - even as Aziraphale's voice comes to him muffled, right ear pressed against one of the angel’s bookcases - fear and resignation - and a very human cadence. Aziraphale had always given himself away, Crowley thinks dully. He thinks he should find his fussing amusing, but he only lets out a small broken noise somewhere from the back of his throat - and Satan that couldn't have really come from him, could it have? Crowley likes to think of himself as being inscrutable, but certainly not now. He's curled in on himself biting back a scream - vulnerable. The pain sharpens as each small movement jars the raw and bloody spot where his left wing was torn from his back.

And Aziraphale, damn him, had only reached to touch the spot to put an end to the bleeding and ease some of the pain - instead his touch had felt like fire, his body rebelling at the holy energy- the same that had held him down - and pried and pulled.

"Okay." Azirapahle says it under his breath as if it gives him some semblance of having control: a nervous little mantra of words. Crowley pulls back, afraid of the reassurance. It isn't okay - and it won't be ever again. There isn't a way to heal such a wound. If he bleeds out enough, he'll just discorporate and he supposes that's one way to solve the problem.

And then he isn't saying "okay", but "Crowley" and Aziraphale is touching his shoulder, his face. Crowley likes how it sounds - and he wants him to say it again, because he thinks there’s real possibility that this will be the last time he'll hear Aziraphale say it. But he hates the concern in his voice and that he's the object of it and that he can't just pull himself back together. That instead he is stuck in a loop of memory - simultaneously playing alongside with the present moment. So that each time Aziraphale tries to do something: leans too close, offers what should be a comforting hand against the wound, he can only remember the hands that had at first pulled out his feathers one by one, and then relished in his screams as each bone was snapped, systematically - with a physician's knowledge of anatomy. The nerves now torn and disconnected send strange sensations to his mind. He'd managed to get away or perhaps he had been meant as a message, as they had dropped him down in front of Aziraphale's shop. In the human world his wings are hidden but the pain remains, searing white hot against his back, under his black shirt. He'd tried to play it cool but it hadn't lasted long, pulling himself from the gutter, he’d stumbled into Aziraphale’s shop.

Moments Ago 

"Angel, I don't mean to drip blood all over your immaculate bookshop, but I can't fucking help it right now. Miracle it way or something," Crowley manages to say, trying to play it off as something light even as he feels his consciousness wavering.

"Is that you Crowley?" He hears from above accompanied by the familiar creaking of the spiral staircase that leads to the second floor. "Crowley, I just had the greatest acquisition! You won’t believe it."

"That's nice, angel," he says leaning against the nearest bookcase.

"Crowley, are you all right?" Aziraphale's eyebrows knit together as he takes in his appearance and then his features rearrange.

"You're bleeding," he says, his eyes trailing from the door to where Crowley stands, head leaning against the nonfiction.

"Astute as always." He slides to the ground, angling so the edges of bone and broken tendons don't collide with the bookcase. The adrenaline from being thrown back into the mortal world wearing off so that every ache and the grievous wound on his back comes to the forefront and he lets out a hiss of air that is more serpent like than he normally would allow.

"What happened?" Aziraphale bends and rests his hand on Crowley’s shoulder. He flinches violently, twisting to the side. The open wound on his back collides with the edge of the bookcase and dark blotches erupt in his vision.

"I'm sorry," Aziraphale says when Crowley's can see him again.

"I hate when you look like at me like that, Aziraphale."

There’s silence between them. And he can’t form the words to describe what’s been done to him. But it comes anyway, a decrepit little word that belies the event.

"Wing.”

"You're wing?" Aziraphale crouches lower. "Pull them out then. I can help you heal it."

"No, don't think you can actually," Crowley says biting out the words through another wave of pain.

"Of course I can. I'm not the biggest fan of miracling away things, but for you dear, I suppose I can make an exception."

He's still trying to keep it light. Crowely can tell that much even while fighting the waves of pain that radiate from the torn nerves, insisting that there are still hands on either side of the wing, other hands holding him down, and then the cracking and tearing - as inhumane a torture that he could ever have thought of. On par with humanity's twisted sense of justice- he just didn't think angels could take such a route. Wings, he thinks, should be off limits. The crack of bone and ligaments still ring in his head. Aziraphale touches his shoulder again and much to his horror he whimpers - because their hands are on him, one clutches his hair, fingers pushing him down against the ground - so that gravel cuts into his cheek. Gravel doesn't seem particularly heavenly he remembers himself remarking. He always thinks it's something his side had come up with.

Whichever angel has him by his hair - he can never keep track of them - lifts his head by his hair and slams his head down into the sharp stones. He lets out a little hiss of pain.

"Enough out of you," the angel says. And then there are a few others surrounding him - he can sense their presence - his heart pounds heavily in his chest. He feels the throb in the base of his left wing - they've stretched it almost painfully to its full wingspan - and fingers run over the length of it - reverently, perversely, he isn't sure, but he knows he doesn't like it and he tries to pull his wing closer to his body.

"No. No I'm afraid you can't do that." The angel tches between his teeth. "Demons aren't meant to have wings."

"Actually I'm quite sure that we do," he says. "Haven't you seen any of the human's depictions? Angels, white fluffy wings - demons, well - I'll concede they're more bat-like than anything, but they're definitely still there."

He's starting to ramble, his fear manifesting in the thought that if he speaks enough - he might be able to talk himself out of this, stumble upon something that might stop them and make them reconsider what they're doing.

"This is too cruel for you lot. You think doing this will reflect well on your brand image - would think again - best go play a harp somewhere and let me be. I wasn't doing anything anyway - drinking tea and suddenly I'm here - I think you could have caught me at least doing something a little more demonic. Fucking with the traffic lights or something, at least. It was a really bland tea too - in no way even thinking about being demonic - super mild."

Blood runs down his cheek.

"Talk as much as you want, it's not going to change anything."

The grip on his wing tightens, fingers moving down the length. He tries to turn his head to see who is touching his wing, but the angel holding him down keeps his head turned to the right.

"You're good at this whole torture thing - you know your tactics."

They were trying to ramp up the fear - so that he couldn't tell when the pain would come.

"I'm starting to think there really isn't much difference-" and then the fingers caressing the feathers turn sharp, gripping the outermost bone along the outside of his wing and pull downward. The bone dislocates with a pop and Crowley's vision grays out. He's bites his tongue - he tastes blood.

"Stay conscious demon," the angel says behind him. "Such beautiful wings," he whispers, fingers dancing around the broken joint. He doesn't know if he'd screamed, but his throat feels raw.

"That's all you've got?" his voice is raspy and the words are hard to get out around the pounding of his heart in his chest and in his ears and now a sharp pulse in the wing.

"Good you're awake," the same fingers snake down his wing - find the next joint.

"Don't-" he tries to say and then there is another snap and he heaves, trying to pull himself forward - fighting against the hands that are holding him down. He tries to pull the wing inwards - but hands press at the joint keeping it stretched out and he hisses trying to get away. The fingers gain purchase, once again caressing his feathers, touching the broken joints so he thinks he'll black out.

He thinks he might beg - how simple it had been to reduce him to a scared begging wreck.

Now it’s Aziraphale he's looking at. Who's holding his hand down by his side, his knees pulled to his chest against one of the angel's bookcases.

"Crowley," he's saying and he sees the fear in his expression - that he'd put that there somehow.

"Shit," he says, running a hand through his hair, little pieces of gravel and stone coming away under his nails. "Crowley, what happened?"

"I can't. I can't," he says because the memory he's just pulled himself from threatens to come back and - oh Satan - it gets so much worse.


	2. Chapter 2

Crowley manages to stand. His sense of gravity shifts - the strangeness of his missing wing making him tilt to the side and he uses the bookcases and then eventually Aziraphale to get to the couch. Aziraphale’s grip on his arm is warm - radiating the same sort of energy that had torn his wing apart, and even as he wants to pull violently away from it, he feels a need for it; A strange juxtaposition he can’t process. He fumbles for his sunglasses- but can’t find them. He doesn’t remember losing them.

"Just help me get to the couch."

"Crowley, you have to tell me what's wrong."

"Just let me sit here for a moment." He slumps onto the couch cushions before drawing himself fully across it, his head turned to the side. “Like a cat in the sun,” Aziraphale has said many times. He feels nothing like that now. A cat on its last life, maybe.

"Let me help you." There’s still a hint of desperation in how it’s said, but now there’s a calm to it, his voice low - placating.

“Just let me lie here for a moment, “ he raises a hand, “in silence."

"You're bleeding."

“Oh that,” Crowley says with resignation. "That, yeah, of course that." He focuses what little energy he has left into the horror that is his back: the snapped bones, the tendons. There’s a strange unreality to the whole thing - "life is but a dream,” he says or thinks he says - because the words seem to echo - the tone cloying.

It makes him think of sitting on the Thames in the 19th century when it would get so cold that it would freeze over - solid - completely solid so that you could walk out on it. He sat languidly by the fires lit in the centre - people warming their hands - and sometimes the wind would stop and the lights in the distance would rise straight up and down caught in the icy fog and a strange silence would fall over him - even among the chatter of the people on the ice and he thought - silent in his own body surrounded by life - that this is human melancholy – only experienced by something finite and aware of it - it aches but it’s beautiful - everything now will one day be different or gone entirely.

And sometimes he would think that such a short life span - so much feeling packed into such fragile vessels was all very dreamlike - and that insipid song - a joke as at that time no boats could move in the Thames - not against the mini ice age that had fallen over London in the early 1800s." Row your boat gently down the stream - life is but a dream."

The next thing he’s aware of is Aziraphale very close to him. He smells like vanilla, and how very human they’ve grown during their time on earth. They indulge in their habits - it’s difficult to divorce from it all - so easy to fall into their ways. The room spins - a nauseating swirl of colored book spines. Someone runs a hand through his hair.

Ridiculous. He doesn’t need that kind of treatment he isn’t a sick child, and yet he doesn’t have the energy to swat the offending hand away, instead he stays still, feeling as weak as he can ever remember feeling - well perhaps a long time ago - but he doesn’t think about that time - he’ll just sleep a little - he's stopped the bleeding. He can’t feel the stickiness of it anymore against his back and his shirt. What is a demon with one wing? - It sounds like the first half of a joke - but the punchline never comes to him. His thoughts continue in the same sort of rut, bumping into each other. He wants to get up but knows he can’t. He's sure he never loses consciousness, only drifts - where - he can’t tell - a liminal space of undefined proportions.

When he next opens his eyes - the pain in his back and his body is numb - an opium like effect – something he hasn’t felt in more than a century. There had been so many novel things in London during the 19th century - he hadn't really slept through it all - he'd spent a lot of time in the opium dens - there were all manner of wicked things going on in there - and he couldn’t say that he didn't enjoy the effects - they were easy enough to shake off too - one thing for being a demon - addiction wasn't really a thing.

But it feels similar to that and he wonders if Aziraphale has done something to him - for a being someone that never sleeps it’s strange to see him with his head leaning back against the armchair - a book teetering on his knee and his mouth slightly open- he has dark circles under his eyes - another very non-angelic look and Crowley sighs, running his hand through his hair - the motion pulls at his back and he feels only the slightest twinge of pain - nothing like the scream and surge of raw torn nerves from before – everything muted. _Definitely Aziraphale_, he thinks. His mind feels empty too -perhaps a blessing because drawing the event into focus would break him.

Now it just sits there at the edge of his consciousness - waiting for him to look. Instead he pushes himself up, shakily. He notes his condition in a detached manner. He needs to see the wound and he uses various pieces of furniture to weave his way to the bookshop’s toilets.

Blood has soaked into the couch cushion - he would get rid of it but the thought of using his powers in his state - makes him feel sick - he feels what little energy he has trying to weave the bone and flesh back together on his back. The toilet is in keeping with the Soho aesthetic of the rest of the building - wood floors, cracked porcelain that decidedly feels right - anything newer than 1940s and you would have felt the experience inauthentic. The mirror is equally appropriate, with scratched, scuffed edges and Crowley stops in front of it, taking in his appearance, and lets out a long sigh - there’s a cut across the bridge of his nose where his sunglasses had broken when he had been forcefully pushed to the ground and under his eye a deep purple bruise and laceration from that so called heavenly gravel.

"Fuck it," he says under his breath and manifests his wing.

He catches himself against the sink – and notices the blood on his hands - from struggling against the gravel, he thinks. His right wing is bloodied, missing a few feathers - possibly a few hairline fractures, bruised and torn, possibly dislocated but for whatever reason the angels had stopped before giving it the same treatment as his left one. He still feels detached - looking at himself and not recognizing anything in his face as his own. There’s empty air behind his left shoulder and he reaches a hand back, he’s met with the cracked bone, a few feathers and sinew still at the base but the skin is knitted.

It feels like it’s still there - the weight of it - and yet he tips to the side - barely keeping himself upright. He furls his right wing inward against his back. Whatever Aziraphale had done, he’s thankful for because numbness is preferable to what he should feel. He knows what it is, heard it all through every war - it didn't always have a name - but the agony - the sorrow and loss had always been there - taxonomy was relatively new, but bringing ideas out of the murk didn't mean they weren't primordial and as old as life itself - there had always been pain - but soldiers screaming in agony that's what he thought of - not recognizing the loss of a limb - waking to feel it still there - itching and pain where there's nothing - a phenomenon that War must of taken great pride in. War and Pride had always been best mates after all. He could distinctly remember them fist bumping over quite a few disastrously shocking inventions.

He moves his wing experimentally - paper towels from a basket near the sink scatter on the floor – Aziraphale’s pristine white towels move upwards, unnatural looking, ethereal - as effects of wings in the mortal world often present surreally.

He's encouraged the idea of a haunting with a slight lift of a wing before. He'd liked to make a séance a little more interesting if given the opportunity - how brave the Londoners had grown in the 19th century. That was when he'd found the time between extended naps to go out into the world. Between the opium dens and the frost fairs and listening to Aziraphale's exploits around the city - his foray into the gavotte and trying to convince Crowley to join him - he'd found himself with little time.

"Nah. Pass." He'd said with wave of his hand. "This is my lazy century. Nothing too strenuous."

"Just dens of iniquity and ice skating?"

"Look these are novelties. Look how creative they're being. I was planning to sleep through the whole century - but they're finally doing something _interesting_. Their grubby war-mongering little hearts have found FUN and even though I am feeling pretty exhausted after all the plagues and petty little skirmishes of the last century - I just can't help myself, Aziraphale. But the gavotte - it's not the most dignified dance, is it?" he had said with a tilt of his head, peering over the edge of the fainting couch he had lounged himself across - hand waving vaguely to indicate his dislike.

"Really, Crowley and I'm the dramatic one."

"Oh just go cavort with your little writer friend and let me be."

Aziraphale looked about the room with something of a dodgy expression.

"I've seen the leather bound - or is it vellum? - gold embossed first editions you come home with. Being a muse gets pretty boring after a while."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Mmm," Crowley said and stretched out even further, his long limbs hanging every which way over the couch. He curled up and slept and didn’t see Aziraphale leave. He had noticed the signed copy of Oscar Wilde's book on the table and to this day he knows exactly where it is in the bookstore. Sometimes he walks by it and feels a weird sense of "jealousy?" that he does his best to put out of his mind.

Humans never live long anyway. What was there really to be jealous of? Even if there are still remnants of them sitting around ensconced in moldering pages. Humans are like that - annoyingly persistent.

Crowley's accrued a slew of opinions over the years related to humans - Aziraphale knows many of them - and wishes that maybe he didn’t because there are often points of contention - an edge to Crowley's voice that speaks of some kind of deep seated hurt that Aziraphale has never been able to figure out entirely.

It might go all the way back to the beginning of creation - but it's too heavy of a subject to breach - and Crowley's defensive when it comes to things like that - he might appear all surface flash and if that's all he could ever present that's what he would do - but it takes someone like Azirphahle to see through it all. And even then trying to get him to admit to in any sort of way that would be true is a Herculean task. Aziraphale shies from it for fear of driving Crowley away or back into whatever funk had been the 19th century.

He'd thought at one point he might have had to stage an intervention because he'd found him stumbling through the street - stoned out of his mind on opium and mumbling incomprehensible things that were tinged with sadness - and he smelled like cologne and perfume and whatever he'd been doing with those souls on the cold streets of London where the snow hadn’t stopped flurrying for months. 

"You did what?"

"They wanted to see something real!" he exclaims. "They do these things - they call them séances - you know bastardizations of the real things that someone told them about in one of their subjugated countries. They want to talk to the dead, so I give them a little show!" He spins about and Aziraphale reaches out, trying to catch him - but his foot slides against the slush and then he's sitting in the gutter looking up at where the stars used to be, now blotted out by the burning gas lamp above his head- orange and bright and then Crowley laughs at the ingenuity of humans and the signs that there is only more to come.

Overcome by the drug in his system - by the choking herbs that they burn when they try to summon their dead - and he'd made the flames rise high from the candles, scorching the ceiling and he'd stretched their shadows high above their heads - and the high keening screams that he'd invoked from hell had risen in the dark corners of the room that even the bright lights couldn't touch. Their shadows had fallen against the wall. The people who had been hopeful but unsure - now watched as the dead danced between their forms - like Chinese lantern pantomimes and he felt the madness in the back of his throat as he watched them - a strange manic glee - as he saw for the briefest moment the comprehensions in their eyes - that yes maybe this stranger they'd brought back with them into this parlor with its rich green velvet curtains was something a little more.

The cold against his hands stung and then Aziraphale was there - sitting next to him.

"You'll mess up your white pressed fop trousers," Crowley said leaning precariously to the side unable to stop his head from coming to rest on Aziraphale's shoulder. He felt the warmth of Azirapahle's hand against his side, pulling him closer. He was still giggling mirthlessly - something it seemed human bodies did when they start to crack up.

He was saying something about sobering up.

"Nah, Angel. That's so boooring - sooo sooo boring."

"Crowley," and then Aziraphale had his hands on either side of his face and they were warm against his skin.

He should be cold shouldn't he - he hates the cold, he thought. He looked down and he wasn’t even wearing his own coat – it was white - Aziraphale's - when did that happen?

Maybe he does need to sober up.

"You know they call it chasing the dragon? Not quite a dragon, am I?" he asked. "But maybe a snake with wings is close enough." He hesitated, swallowed thickly. "A worm. A worm that's what they used to call a dragon without legs but wings. Pretty lowly, isn't it? But still, wouldn’t you rather be any sort of dragon than a demon?" Crowley said, his head lolling against Aziraphale's lapels, his cravat tickling his nose.

Aziraphale pulled him to his feet and he sagged against his side, finding his footing - losing it - sliding in the slush- and then using Aziraphale's arm gratuitously as a crutch.

"I think the 19th century suits you better than you want to believe." Aziraphale said under his breath as they passed a public house where three drunks leaned in various stages of inebriation.

"No way - no way, angel. I'm sleeping through this whole mess of a century."

"You're certainly doing something." Aziraphale said.

Crowley looks at himself in the mirror in the 21st century. He had been a mess. He'd had a bit of relapse in the 1960s, but who hadn't - and then he'd been more straight and narrow than he'd been for quite a while. He'd kicked the habit with the times.

"Crowley?" There's a soft knock against the door, and he sags slightly against the porcelain sink, feeling dizzy and old and far too human. He's locked the door. The pain and terror is starting to pick at the psychological scab Aziraphale must have invoked.

The wing he's still manifesting feels heavy and broken and he hisses in pain as he tries to move it again: A neurotic test to make sure it's still there. A thought that when he looks next they'll both be gone and then he'll be as human as he's ever been.

He sinks low until he's sitting on the woven carpet in front of the bathtub, his broken wing prone behind him - he doesn't have the energy to pull it close to his body, and he leans back against the basin. Aziraphale continues to knock.

He catches the slight rise in intonation in Aziraphale's voice and he suspects it is only perceptible to someone who's been around him for six-thousand years. It's a sign he's afraid.

"Can you open the door?"

Crowley's surprised Aziraphale hasn't already - strange that he's respecting his boundaries to such an extent when usually he's trying to get Crowley to tear down walls.

He needs to leave, he thinks.

Whatever the angels had done to him there's no guarantee that they won't do the same to Aziraphale. There really is something broken in him because he knows he's already beginning to accept the lack of his wing - they're things he shouldn’t have had to begin with - no other demons have them. It's surprising he's kept them as long as he has.

The angel holding him down had whispered something to that extent into his ear - and a little part of him had agreed - that small niggling thought he rebelled against had taken over his consciousness in that moment - the pain of each snapped bone taking more of his reason - whatever force in his mind that kept those thoughts at bay giving way - to the hand roving over his feathers, holding his shoulder, pressing his head into the gravel - and that angelic energy so similar to Aziraphale's - pulling at him - and he sees himself with his head leaning against Aziraphale's shoulder and he tries to hang onto that when the angel above him had leaned down, moving each broken joint so that his vision had blackened and then the next thing he awoke to was a searing white hot agony, as hands pressed his shoulder's down and gripped the wing at the base and began to twist and turn the joint so that that he heard the bone snap.

The angel above him had faltered for a moment and he struggled, breaking free and then there was blood everywhere and he was on his feet, tripping struggling and he heard a cry from behind him and then he was in the street in front of Aziraphale's shop - filling the Soho gutter with his blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

He's vaguely aware of his actions, of running a hand through the top feathers of his remaining wing, and pulling it closer to his body until it’s wrapped around him. The bones protest the movement and yet he pulls it closer, biting his lip against the pain and he crouches low, his back against the toilet and stares at the door, unable to bring himself to open it and face Aziraphale. Not in this state. He needs to pull himself back together. He keeps telling himself that he should leave. That would be the best for both of them but he's caught in inaction and can't bring himself to do anything let alone move. His remaining wing throbs against the angle he's forcing the hair line fractures to bend in, but it's pain he causes himself and a pain he has control over, but he relents after a moment and his wing slouches to the floor. It's still there. It's still there, he tells himself - you don't have to hurt yourself to prove it.

But he's exhausted and it’s difficult to wrap his mind around. Aziraphale knocks again, this time harder, and he wonders how long his patience will last.

"Crowley, just say something."

"Something," he mutters under his breath. Probably wasn't loud enough. "I need a moment," he manages to say his voice catching on the words. There's silence from behind the door, but he can imagine Aziraphale with his hand raised.

"Crowley, I want to talk with you. I don't want you to have to be alone right now."

"I'm fine" he says quickly. To stop Aziraphale from knocking again, he painfully, slowly climbs to his feet. He waves a hand towards the bruises and feels what little energy he has take away the underlying inflammation so that they're not as pronounced. The wing he can't do anything for, his vision is already swimming with his earlier effort and the room warps strangely. He clutches the sink and notices with the same detachment that's been dogging him that the cuts on his hands have opened. He should heal those too, he thinks but instead just stands still, wavering on the spot. He tucks them in his pockets with a small wince.

He needs a new pair of sunglasses. He feels too exposed without them. The familiar anxiety present in his gut that has been with him since - well he doesn't like to think about it - it's one of those things he puts out of his mind to keep from feeling too much - but well, if there was ever a time to be relieving old painful memories he supposes now is appropriate.

Aziraphale's out there waiting, and he isn't about to make a bloody scene in the middle of his bathroom. He's already made one in the entrance way and well the couch would certainly draw questions and perhaps the police, but who's he kidding, Aziraphale had probably already miracled it away. So he squares his shoulders, sets his jaw and opens the door. It does appear that the angel is about mid knock.

Aziraphale looks at him with a raised eyebrow and then lowers his hand. "Oh."

"Oh? That's all you have to say? You summoned me for Satan's sake. At least the humans who did had the forethought to have something in mind: 'oh, can you talk to my dead grandmother. 'Queenie, my cat of sixteen years just passed away; can't you bring her back from the heavenly cat realm?' - the answer is always 'no!' They don't know what it's like dealing with Bast. The scratches. I tell you, the scars! Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Concerned."

"Well, I am. You just suffered a trauma, Crowley and you're cracking jokes. I'm surprised you're even on your feet."

"Well, angel, all it takes is a little willpower."

He's aggressively imagining himself not walking into a bookcase or stumbling and his body does it's best to stay upright so that's something.

"But Crowley, I'm wor-"

"Well stop."

"I can't help it. You're missing a wing."

Crowley stops in his tracks, his will momentarily thrown. "You - you miracled away the blood I see." He looks pointedly towards the couch so he won't have to look at Aziraphale.

"Well -well look you're trying to change the topic. Besides you do know even though I don't sell anything, I still have patrons and I can't have them calling the police."

"I was actually thinking the same thing."

Well he just wouldn't manifest his wings anymore. It's not like he did very often when he's on earth anyways and he's always pretty much on earth. They're bulky. They get in the way. When they're in the ethereal plane he can barely even tell that something's wrong.

"I have it under control," he says to Azirapahle. "Let's just have a drink." He pauses. "Actually better yet, let's go out."

"No. No. You're in no state."

"The filthy, unwashed, slightly bloody, rumpled state I'm in can be quite fetching."

Aziraphale hovers nearby, his hands slightly raised as if he's waiting to rest them on Crowley's shoulders and steer him towards a sitting position, but they stay there and he realizes once again that he's afraid of something. He doesn't normally hesitate like this. What had happened? What had he done?

He feels the dawning horror in is chest and he lets out a shaky breath.

He must have reacted badly to the Aziraphale's healing attempt. He looks frantically around the room until his eyes come to rest near the rug under the couch. There's broken glass shards littering the fibers and he can see where the angel had haphazardly tried to repair a lamp. There are pieces of it still missing. There's blood on Aziraphale's pristine jacket. So he had miracled away the blood on the couch but not the blood on his jacket? He must have followed Crowley's gaze because he swallows heavily and says, "Oh dear."

Crowley's hands are shaking and there are memories that are trying to fight their way up from his addled mind and remind him exactly what he's done.

There's a brief flash - of the radiant energy running though his body and his mind going blank - white with fear and rage, and striking out, breaking the lamp, and grabbing the shards in his hand.

He pulls himself form the memory and back into the room. His gaze drops to his palm, and the cuts he had thought had been from his earlier struggle are not abrasions but thin slices that he knows will match the shape and thickness of the shards on the floor.

"I – I-"

"It's okay Crowley, you didn't do anything."

He lets his hand drop to his side, his gaze lingering on the slice in Aziraphale's pristine jacket. "I- I wasn’t in my right mind." He remembers moving his arm as if it wasn't his, as if he were still back in heaven and the angels that had been holding him down were in front of him. It was his chance to get away, to make them feel some pain. And he had pushed himself awkwardly from the couch towards Aziraphale. The shard from the broken lamp cutting deep into his hand but he didn't feel it and he had lashed out at the only angel in front of him, Aziraphale whose hand had been on his back. How had Crowley forgotten? How? Aziraphale hadn't moved as the shard cut through his sleeve and into his arm. Crowley struck again. Now he can see the stab wound just below his left rib - healed. The way he had looked at Crowley - the image comes back to him and he swallows thickly. In his face had been shock, betrayal, hate.

Crowley doesn't remember much after that. He notes where the blood from his hand has soaked into the black fabric of his jacket.

He takes a step towards Aziraphale and the angel moves back, just the slightest, just a momentary flinch that probably wouldn't have been noticed under normal circumstances. Crowley inhales deeply and turns away. He had been worried about his presence hurting Aziraphale but in the end it had been him alone. He had stabbed his best friend. He remembers how he had clutched his side, backing away. "Crowley," he had wheezed, looking at the blood between his fingers.

He'll leave and he won't come back, he thinks, but then Aziraphale is gripping his sleeve.

"Let go," he says and the word catches in his throat."

"It doesn't really hurt. I was just surprised."

"Of course it hurt," he hisses.

"You weren't thinking straight. I could see it in your eyes."

"Did I look feral like the sssnake I am," he hisses. "Snakes were never meant to have wings," he says and reaches back towards his wing, thinking he'll tear it from his back.

"Crowley, stop." He reaches and grabs his other arm and he turns Crowley towards him.

He can't look at him. He keeps his eyes above Aziraphale's head. Aziraphale wraps his arms around his middle and then pulls Crowley closer, running a hand over his back, tentative near his shoulders. "You can relax, Crowley. You're safe."

"But you're not safe from me," he says and his voice breaks a little. He tries to pull away, but Aziraphale won't let him. The sob catches in his throat, and he bites it back.

"Relax, breathe." He lets out a sob of a breath and Aziraphale leads him to the couch. He buries his head against Aziraphale's shoulder. It isn't just his wing, but years and years of holding emotions back - of keeping up a façade, of feeling broken, and now his form matches his inner perception and isn't it all just fucking perfect.

He feels himself starting to drift again.

"I'm going to try and heal you a little more, okay?"

"Mmm," he says and he feels the warmth of heavenly energy flowing through his body.

"Your wing," he says.

But Crowley still can't bring himself to manifest it.

"Please, Crowley, you have to let me help you heal it."

"You ask a lot, Angel," he says, but he's too tired to protest and it's almost against his will that the one remaining one curls from behind his back and he lets out a deep hiss of pain as the bruised joints and fractured bones manifest. Aziraphale exhales loudly.

"I can't believe they would do this."

"Believe it," he says. But it was muffled against his blazer and he isn't even sure if he had heard it.

"Angels don't do this."

"It is a little dark ages, but I think your knid secretly loved that time. So many souls to save," he says. He pulls his wing once again closer to his body, feeling that same irrational fear that he's in danger and he hisses through his teeth.

"Don't do that," Aziraphale says. "Just relax just-" he falters. "Make yourself as comfortable as you. He slides down lower so his head is resting against Aziraphale's thigh.

"Just let me lie here, angel. Do your angel magic or whatever."

"Miracles."

"Mmmm.”

“I wasn't in my right mind," he finally manages to say.

"What are you talking about?"

"I stabbed you, Aziraphale."

"It's nothing to worry about. You know I haven't been stabbed since the 18th century. I quite forgot what it felt like."

"Oh don't. Don't try to make any less serious."

"I understand what happened. I don't want to. I wish I didn't.”

Crowley doesn’t say anything just pushes himself a little closer to Aziraphale. "It must hurt, so much Crowley. Can I try to heal it?”

"Well last time it looks like I tried to kill you. I don't really remember what happened.

He hesitates because it isn't true. "Just flashes."

"That's a bit of my fault. I wanted to take away the pain and in doing so I think I rendered you unconscious but your body reacted anyway to the radiant energy. You were just trying to protect yourself.”

"I shouldn't have lost control like that," he grinds the words out between his teeth."

"Cut yourself some slack. It's really nothing, dear."

He leans into the word, holding onto it as a sign that Aziraphale still cares, that he forgives him.

"You have to let me fix your suit once I have some of my blessed powers back."

"Of course. It feels inauthentic if I do it, but like you did last time - I was hoping you would say something like that."

He feels once again revulsion towards Aziraphale's power as he starts channeling them into Crowley’s wound but there's enough familiarity in that he manages to stay still.

"I'm going to be very gentle."

"Oh whatever, Angel. Do your worst."

"Best, Crowley, angels do their best."

"Is that so. I don't know if I can say the same for your mates up in heaven. Not a big fan right now."

That shuts him up.

"Lower it. Can you extend it a bit?"

A muffle groans catches in his throat as he stretches the broken bones.

"Oh, Crowley. I don't know what to say. I can't imagine." He sounds almost tearful.

"Buck up, Angle. I've had worse."

He doesn't say anything to that and Crowley wants to look up and see his expression.

"There's quite a few little breaks and your poor feathers." Blood still matts them in a few places.

"What about my other wing? I think that's the more pressing matter."

"There's nothing I can do about that, Crowley."

"Your kind doesn't go about reattaching them once they rip them off, do they? Do they make a trophy of it? What exactly do angels do with the things they take from demons?"

He's being cruel, but he can't stop himself. "Why don't you take some feathers too, Aziraphale? Add them to all the shit you keep in here." His voice cracks and he stops talking, biting down hard on his tongue, aware of how traitorous his emotions are being. He swallows hard, but Aziraphale still has a hand against his back, and he feels the slightest warmth as if he's channeling his energy cautiously into the broken bones.

He relents a little. "I don't mean it, Aziraphale, just ignore me." He'd stabbed him. He'd hurt him and here he is saying awful things to him. "You deserve someone kinder." he says.

"But I have you," he can hear the smirk in his voice.

"And you're okay with that?"

"Would I spend my my precious evenings with you if I wasn't?"

"Well there was the 19th century."

"You didn't really sleep through it though. That's just your exaggeration. You think it makes you sound cool."

"Well, doesn't it?"

"I saw the state you were in half the time and how you spent the whole winter - oh what year was it '14 '15? - freezing out on the Thames even though you can't even regulate your own body temperature."

"I did my best."

"Yes, you always have."

Crowley once again is rendered speechless. The ache in his wing is starting to lesson.

"Do you know who did this?"

"They kept my head turned away."

Aziraphale falters for a moment with that news.

"How many were there?" His voice is quiet, low.

"Four."

"My god," he really wants to see his face after that swear. "That's too cruel."

"Would one have been a better match? Two of them held me down. I couldn't see the bastard stretching out my wing or the one who decided to stomp on this one." He flexes it and winces.

"Don't move it yet. It’s very delicate work Don't want to overdo it. You wouldn't be able to move it at all then. He nods but feels far away. Only half in the room.

"I shouldn't make you talk about it."

"I want to," he says after a moment. "I don't want to forget it. I want - I want-"

"Justice?"

"Well that's how I’m feeling too. I just can't believe it."

"Well you need to. It happened."

"I know it did. But it just seems crueler than what I'm used to."

"They were going to push you into hellfire."

"But I had gone against them. It would have been a quick death anyway. But to tear off a wing, to hold you down and torture you, that's not very heavenly at all.


End file.
